Now I am here, watching a stray cat pierce a beetle with its unchecked claws on the windowsill as the sun rises, while my grandfather still does not snore, and I kick the heavy blanket off my body and the dust floats around in the thin rays of light, like the first pollen of the summer or star projections on the walls of a planetarium.
In the morning, Grandpa and I walk outside holding cups of tea. Overnight, more artists contributed to our gate. Fascist, Marxfucker, Love and Truth Prevail over Fuck You, and a simpler one: Get Out. Eventually, the vandals gave up on spraying letters and instead created simple lines and crosses in red, blue, and white, the colors of the republic. Through my rose tea, I smell urine, so much of it. Grandpa gets on his bicycle to go buy paint. He returns in a couple of hours, so drunk that he cannot keep his left buttock on the seat.
Most of the children in the village never liked me—I am a city boy, will always be a city boy, and in this they assume I feel superior to them, with their village roots, though I have always regarded St?eda as an equal home to Prague. Now their dislike turns hostile—they shout at me, chase me on their bicycles, and I make sure that I never find myself without adults around. The adults’ hostility is more hidden. When I walk on the main road to buy ice cream, the women’s hellos and how-are-yous are pointed accusations, as if to say that my well-being imposes on theirs. The men, young and old, are quietly aggressive, clenching their fists and flexing their forearms whenever they see me. The only person who does not act differently is my friend Boud’a. We have spent every summer vacation together since we were three, and now he has become my only friend and companion. He never speaks of my parents, doesn’t mention my past. We simply walk to the Riviera, the village’s version of a beach, and swim in the river when all the other children are away. We collect ants in soup cans, we try our first cigarette in the woods.
The rains pass and the world is now hot and inviting, but Grandma stops going to the store every day and Grandpa watches TV instead of going to the pub. Often, I catch him looking at the apartment section in the newspaper, circling places in Prague. He hides the paper when I come near and he won’t talk. I don’t want to think about moving from this house, this home. Though I grew up in Prague, St?eda has always been a sanctuary, a place where my mother often smiled, taking me for hour-long walks, a place where my father spoke more, and never about work or politics, a place where no cars pass by at night and one can seek perfect darkness in the fields, away from street lamps and golden bulbs seeping from windows.
It is home, but we are no longer welcome. When my father the hero was lost, my father the nation’s villain came to light. Those morning Elvis songs, mixed with his coffee slurps and the shuffling of newspapers (The imperialists are killing the poor with drugs, he would scoff), hum in my ears all night and into the morning, forbidding sleep.
Deep Surveillance
THE DISTANCES LIFE TRAVELS to find other life.
From the first prokaryote battling the wild seas of prehistoric Earth to hominids acquiring their first crude tools; from Neanderthals scratching the likeness of their world onto cave walls with red and yellow ochre to the first Russian satellite (weight: eighty-three kilograms) orbiting around Terra and pulsing its exhilarating beeps to Earth’s radios; from the first Soviet phantom spacemen sent by the motherland to die nameless to the first men pinning flags to extraterrestrial surfaces (yes, these glowing rocks now belong to us); from the Hubble telescope photographing the first worlds beyond our own (could they ever be ours?) to the ecstasy of finding life’s greatest bacteria sustainer, H2O, on the surfaces of planets mercilessly teasing our imaginations; and finally to the first man-made Voyager exiting the cozy luxuries of our very own solar system. Life will always travel to find other life.
And there was me. Jakub Procházka, sole crew member of shuttle JanHus1, who could sweep these discoveries off the table as if they were merely the insignificant crumbs of a bygone era.
It had been six days and eighteen hours since I watched the creature flee. I found comfort in its mind visits, despite their invasiveness—the constant ache around my temples preserved my belief that I would see it again.
Earth was now a shining point deep within the heavens, a home reduced to a unit of punctuation. Once a day, I focused my telescope to remind myself of the blues and whites awaiting me upon my return, a planet willing to sustain me and those I knew. In comparison to these magnifications of my planet, Venus seemed quite dull and every bit as hostile as its never-ending thunderstorms and volcanic explosions, its surface a deceptively still malt of sand and rock. The planet was pale and static when viewed through the thick haze of cloud Chopra, still two weeks away and thus appearing motionless, though daily readings offered proof that the cloud was continuing to collapse on itself.
Every day now, my progress toward the cloud took over the news cycle, and the public relations frenzy over my mission was at its peak. The New York Times ran a six-page profile detailing the actions of my father, the regime’s hero, the betrayer of the people. It was a fine essay on the history of the country (I wondered whether the Times had ever given my country the time of day before) combined with irrelevant and condescending comments on my life as a rags-to-riches boy from a small country with a big country’s moxie. Media outlets all over the world took up the task to describe me to their respective populations as if they were describing a friend. A Norwegian starlet, touring Hollywood for a new major film, declared me her number one celebrity crush. My government PR team—most of whom I had never met, and who looked like they’d just obtained their real estate license—toured Europe to speak about my bravery, the importance of keeping Space exploration alive, and my preference regarding boxers versus briefs. Central forwarded emails from entertainment publicists in bulk, offering to represent me, to sell my life story rights to film producers, biographers, and the occasional desperate novelist.